Jimmy Williams, a longtime bank executive and fixture in Atlanta's business community who died this week, had an indelible impact on those who worked with him in and outside of banking.
"Jimmy was the quintessential banker, the go-to person for virtually everything Atlanta, and he also had a national and global impact through his many board memberships,"
James Bryan "Jimmy" Williams, 90, died Tuesday due to complications from Parkinson's disease, according to
"Jimmy was really helpful when I became CEO," said Rogers, who assumed the top job at SunTrust in 2011 and led the bank before its merger with BB&T in 2019. Rogers later became
"My whole career has been with the bank, and Jimmy has always been a part of that," Rogers said. "He gave great advice about how to manage and about what's important to board members. It was straightforward and grounded in his experience."
Williams spent almost a half century at the bank — and its predecessor Trust Co. of Georgia — and as CEO built a reputation for steady, cautious leadership.
In a 1991 interview with
SunTrust acquired Nashville, Tennessee-based Equitable Securities Co. in 1997, adding functions such as underwriting debt and equity offerings from clients. Other deals included the acquisition of Richmond, Virginia-based Crestar Financial in 1998.
Williams put SunTrust in an interesting position in the 1990s, getting it to a size where it could remain independent but not big enough to be on the same footing as what would become Bank of America and First Union-Wachovia, said Paul Davis, a former American Banker editor and reporter, in an email on Thursday.
"While he unified all of the company's legacy banks under the SunTrust brand, he generally preferred slow and steady growth at a time when [former Bank of America CEO] Hugh McColl and former First Union CEO Ed Crutchfield were aggressively expanding their banks through acquisitions," said Davis, who is now director of market intelligence at the consulting and advisory company Strategic Resource Management.
During his tenure, Williams navigated the bank through economic challenges, leading the institution to its best year in history (at the time) in 1994, during a period when high interest rates caused a steep drop in bank stocks.
Williams was also a fixture in Atlanta's business community, serving on numerous boards, including The Coca-Cola Co., where he joined the board in 1979. Williams was chairman of the Robert W. Woodruff Foundation and was on the boards of other Atlanta area organizations; and he was friends with Robert Woodruff, one of Atlanta's most powerful business leaders, who was president of Coca-Cola from 1923 until his death in 1985.
Williams' other board memberships included Rollins Co. and Genuine Parts Co. He was additionally a trustee of Emory University — his alma mater.
"Jimmy was a force in banking and in business, and he was on the board of Coca-Cola before he became CEO of the bank," Russ Hardin, president of the Woodruff Foundation, said in an interview Thursday. "He would sit on four to six boards at a time. Nobody would do that today, given the time involved."
